Language Log apparently thinks there are official rules determined by history.
This could hardly be farther form the truth. Language Log thinks that some completely made up rules that even the authors that propagate them often don’t follow in the very books they are doing the propagating in (I’m not sure if this applies in the specific case of Strunk and White and singular they, but it applies in many cases of what’s labeled prescriptivist poppycock there) are made even more absurd by history and the usage of high status people praised for their style.
This could hardly be farther form the truth. Language Log thinks that some completely made up rules that even the authors that propagate them often don’t follow in the very books they are doing the propagating in
Exactly so. My favorite example is Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” in which he rails against (among other things) the passive voice, but the very opening sentence of the essay contains the phrase “it is generally assumed.” Mistakes were made, I guess...
This is unfair to Orwell. Orwell’s advice is not to never use the passive voice. To begin, Orwell gives examples of bad writing and says:
I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged: … the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active …
His obvious complaint is that the passive voice is overused and inappropriately used, not that it is used at all. Note the phrase “wherever possible”. That suggests that the problem he is identifying is one of excess. In obvious reaction to this, he suggests a rule which exactly flips the above description, specifically:
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
This however does not say “never use the passive, ever”. And it should furthermore be obvious that Orwell does not mean, “never use the passive where you can find some convoluted and unreadable way to use the active.” I should think that you could always find some convoluted way to use the active. Rather, I think it should be obvious that he means, “never use the passive where you can use the active well.” What it amounts to is a reminder to the writer to re-examine his passives to see whether an active would not be better.
Well, yes, he also says, “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” But his opening sentence sounds to me precisely like the sort of passive that he’s warning against. It conjures the image of vague nameless opponents instead of naming concrete people, or at least concrete sorts of people, where we could examine if he really represents their views fairly. For a careful reader, this should be a warning that he might be setting up a strawman.
Can you even think of a concrete phrase that exemplifies a more shamelessly weasely use of passive than “it is generally assumed that...”?
Your position seems to be, then, that Orwell’s advice is sound, and it was his failure to follow his own advice which was unsound. I had taken you to mean approximately the opposite—that Orwell, a good writer, failed to take his own advice, and thereby illustrated the unsoundness of his advice. Or did you have something else entirely in mind?
Actually, both, to some extent. There is good and bad writing in terms of aesthetic style, and also in terms of logical soundness and factual accuracy. Any given piece of writing can be good or bad along these dimensions almost independently. Clearly, texts that combine great style with bad logic and inaccurate facts are especially misleading and difficult to assess correctly, and a lot of Orwell’s writing is in this category.
Now, in this essay, the great stylist Orwell breaks his own advice all over the place and thereby demonstrates that it’s complete rubbish when it comes to achieving good writing style. Good style in fact requires breaking these rules so often that it’s meaningless to espouse them as general guidelines. What’s significant is that Orwell is such a good stylist that his style dazzles you into not realizing this even as the contradictions are dancing in front of your nose. At the same time, the rules do have some limited applicability when it comes to logic and facts: some particular sorts of passives, bad metaphors, etc. are commonly used as weasely rhetorical tricks—and Orwell’s weasely essay does in fact employ them, hidden in plain sight by his great style.
So, to sum it up, Orwell has taken some observations about writing of non-zero but limited usefulness and applicability and written an unsound essay espousing them as supposedly general (if not absolute) rules. In the process he has contradicted himself by demonstrating that to achieve good style one must break these rules liberally, and also by breaking them in those situations where they do have some applicability (such as the awful “it is generally assumed that...”).
Debates on proper language style and grammar are always entertaining due to the impossibility fundamentally inherent in them of ever coming to a rational resolution. It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
Or a temptation to reinforce bad habits of rhetoric so that when there is actually a rational conclusion to be reached everyone can merrily ignore it and follow their ego unfettered.
To expand on this point—Strunk & White and Language Log are both playing the “does this look right nowadays” game; the difference is that LL is basing their conclusions on what people actually do nowadays, whereas S&W are simply stating what they think would work better with no actual testing. That they failed to actually follow it suggests that in actual usage they did not find it to work better.
The reference to historical authors (rather than the current ones that would be more relevant) is just a bit of Dark Arts by LL, because the people espousing such arbitrary rules often claim they are based on history.
If that’s actually what’s being argued, no. And indeed prescriptivists often do argue this. But nobody seems to have actually been claiming that in this case.
This could hardly be farther form the truth. Language Log thinks that some completely made up rules that even the authors that propagate them often don’t follow in the very books they are doing the propagating in (I’m not sure if this applies in the specific case of Strunk and White and singular they, but it applies in many cases of what’s labeled prescriptivist poppycock there) are made even more absurd by history and the usage of high status people praised for their style.
Exactly so. My favorite example is Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” in which he rails against (among other things) the passive voice, but the very opening sentence of the essay contains the phrase “it is generally assumed.” Mistakes were made, I guess...
This is unfair to Orwell. Orwell’s advice is not to never use the passive voice. To begin, Orwell gives examples of bad writing and says:
His obvious complaint is that the passive voice is overused and inappropriately used, not that it is used at all. Note the phrase “wherever possible”. That suggests that the problem he is identifying is one of excess. In obvious reaction to this, he suggests a rule which exactly flips the above description, specifically:
This however does not say “never use the passive, ever”. And it should furthermore be obvious that Orwell does not mean, “never use the passive where you can find some convoluted and unreadable way to use the active.” I should think that you could always find some convoluted way to use the active. Rather, I think it should be obvious that he means, “never use the passive where you can use the active well.” What it amounts to is a reminder to the writer to re-examine his passives to see whether an active would not be better.
Well, yes, he also says, “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” But his opening sentence sounds to me precisely like the sort of passive that he’s warning against. It conjures the image of vague nameless opponents instead of naming concrete people, or at least concrete sorts of people, where we could examine if he really represents their views fairly. For a careful reader, this should be a warning that he might be setting up a strawman.
Can you even think of a concrete phrase that exemplifies a more shamelessly weasely use of passive than “it is generally assumed that...”?
Your position seems to be, then, that Orwell’s advice is sound, and it was his failure to follow his own advice which was unsound. I had taken you to mean approximately the opposite—that Orwell, a good writer, failed to take his own advice, and thereby illustrated the unsoundness of his advice. Or did you have something else entirely in mind?
Actually, both, to some extent. There is good and bad writing in terms of aesthetic style, and also in terms of logical soundness and factual accuracy. Any given piece of writing can be good or bad along these dimensions almost independently. Clearly, texts that combine great style with bad logic and inaccurate facts are especially misleading and difficult to assess correctly, and a lot of Orwell’s writing is in this category.
Now, in this essay, the great stylist Orwell breaks his own advice all over the place and thereby demonstrates that it’s complete rubbish when it comes to achieving good writing style. Good style in fact requires breaking these rules so often that it’s meaningless to espouse them as general guidelines. What’s significant is that Orwell is such a good stylist that his style dazzles you into not realizing this even as the contradictions are dancing in front of your nose. At the same time, the rules do have some limited applicability when it comes to logic and facts: some particular sorts of passives, bad metaphors, etc. are commonly used as weasely rhetorical tricks—and Orwell’s weasely essay does in fact employ them, hidden in plain sight by his great style.
So, to sum it up, Orwell has taken some observations about writing of non-zero but limited usefulness and applicability and written an unsound essay espousing them as supposedly general (if not absolute) rules. In the process he has contradicted himself by demonstrating that to achieve good style one must break these rules liberally, and also by breaking them in those situations where they do have some applicability (such as the awful “it is generally assumed that...”).
Debates on proper language style and grammar are always entertaining due to the impossibility fundamentally inherent in them of ever coming to a rational resolution. It’s a fun distraction to hone the creative mind for when real debate comes along.
Or a temptation to reinforce bad habits of rhetoric so that when there is actually a rational conclusion to be reached everyone can merrily ignore it and follow their ego unfettered.
To expand on this point—Strunk & White and Language Log are both playing the “does this look right nowadays” game; the difference is that LL is basing their conclusions on what people actually do nowadays, whereas S&W are simply stating what they think would work better with no actual testing. That they failed to actually follow it suggests that in actual usage they did not find it to work better.
The reference to historical authors (rather than the current ones that would be more relevant) is just a bit of Dark Arts by LL, because the people espousing such arbitrary rules often claim they are based on history.
Is it Dark Arts to head off at the pass the feeling that a grammatical rule is upholding ‘proper, traditional’ English against ‘slipping standards’?
If that’s actually what’s being argued, no. And indeed prescriptivists often do argue this. But nobody seems to have actually been claiming that in this case.
If it had been explicitly claimed it wouldn’t be ‘heading it off at the pass’!
:-)